Fears of possible deportations of illegal immigrants have caused the cancellation of a Cinco de Mayo festival planned in Colonial Beach Saturday.
"We were going to have a parade, Latin American dance groups, a choral group, one or more bands, prizes and vendors of Latin American food and other things," said Dr. Peter Fahrney, president of the Colonial Beach Foundation, the sponsor of the event.
"It would have been the third festival. This year we were calling it the Hispanic American Heritage Day,"
But an inquiry about the event from a U.S. immigration official sent shockwaves through the Hispanic community already nervous about recent raids that have captured illegal immigrants for deportation, said Fahrney.
Latino advocate Maria Roe of Colonial Beach said she received the phone call two weeks ago from Gloria Williams-Brevard, a community relations officer of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. CIS is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Williams-Brevard, who works at the Arlington office of CIS, said this week that she had seen an announcement about the festival on the Internet.
Williams-Brevard said her office plays no role in identifying or arresting illegal immigrants. She said her job is to establish contacts and build relationships in communities.
She said she called to find out where Colonial Beach was with an idea of perhaps setting up a table at the festival with pamphlets about immigration regulations.
But Roe said she did not like Williams-Brevard's tone on the phone.
"I asked her why she was interested in this festival. She became very authoritarian and wanted to make sure I knew who she was. She really made me nervous," said Roe.
"She asked for the physical address of the festival so she could look it up on a map. Do you mean the Department of Homeland Security can't find Colonial Beach?" Roe said.
"I had to inform the festival committee about that call," Roe said. "If someone had been taken away, I would have been the cause."
All of the sponsors agreed to cancel the festival after learning about the government's interest in it, she said.
Several other organizations were helping the Colonial Beach Foundation plan the festival.
Fahrney said the festival committee included representatives of the Virginia Cooperative Extension Service, the Virginia Housing Development Authority, the Rappahannock Area Health Education Center, the Rappahannock Migrant and Seasonal Workers Council and the Dahlgren Hispanic Foundation.
In the April 25 edition of "The Journal," a weekly newspaper serving King George and Westmoreland counties, Roe explained the committee's decision this way:
"Many Hispanics would have been afraid to participate in the event, regardless of their legal status. Those attending would have felt added pressure for their own safety, which would have taken away part of the joy of the celebration."
In the newspaper's "El Diario" section, Roe wrote extensively last month about the plight of a Westmoreland County family whose breadwinner was apprehended in February by an agent of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE].
According to Roe, Ramiro Espinosa is an illegal immigrant, but his wife and eight children are all American citizens. The children range in age from 12 years to about 2 months.
While ICE holds Espinosa for deportation, his family is struggling to survive, Roe reported.
"The situation is that a working parent has been removed from his family and is not able to provide for them," Roe wrote.
"Who will pay to raise these children? We all will one way or another. It is the community, the taxpayers who will end up paying."
Under intense political pressure to control illegal immigration, ICE has removed 221,664 illegal immigrants from the United States over the last year, a 20 percent increase over the year before, The New York Times reported yesterday.
Fahrney said the Westmoreland raid and others like it throughout the region and the country have frightened Hispanics. Immigrant labor is vital to the region's farms, seafood processors, sawmills, factories and other businesses.
"The Colonial Beach Foundation supports the immigration laws of this county," Fahrney said.
"It's a shame that any group of Americans have such fear of their government that they decline to participate in events designed to integrate them into the main stream of the American way of life."
Frank Delano: 804/333-3834